


full blown attack

by limned



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst, CBC taking liberties, F/M, Porn with Feelings, Protectiveness, athletes village smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 07:04:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14100000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limned/pseuds/limned
Summary: It’s the longest bus ride of Scott’s life.  He can’t help snatching glances but she won’t look at him, her face turned resolutely toward the window, hands folded in her lap the same way they’d been in the studio.





	full blown attack

He doesn’t have the courage to say anything when they finally exit the CBC studio. She’d done a great acting job during the interview and the praise clips from other skaters, but he could tell the anger was still there, simmering. Now that they’ve escaped the media complex he can see it even more clearly: Tessa is _pissed_. It’s just banked and waiting, and possibly getting worse.

They’re on a half-empty shuttle headed back to the village when he finally inhales to start the conversation, but she cuts him off before he can get a word out. “Not until we’re alone,” she says, quiet but forceful.

It’s the longest bus ride of Scott’s life. He can’t help snatching glances but she won’t look at him, her face turned resolutely toward the window, hands folded in her lap the same way they’d been in the studio.

The walk through the village isn’t any better. They keep getting intercepted by well-meaning teammates and acquaintances and complete strangers, and while Tessa is efficient with the smiling apologies that they need to move along because they’re on a tight schedule, it still feels like it takes forever to reach their dorm.

By the time he follows her out of the elevator to her room, he’s so tense that he’s ready to blow, ready to get mad right back at her from sheer nerves and self-defense. It’s the worst feeling, this crawling anxiety that he’s disappointed her, and done it so badly that she doesn’t even want to look at him.

The door is barely shut behind them when Tessa says in a calm, level tone, “What’s the heaviest thing in this room?”

Scott blinks at her, caught out. He doesn’t know how he thought she would start, but it sure as hell wasn’t like that. “What?”

She’s digging through one of her bags but breaks off after a few seconds, pursing her lips. “The iron. Probably the iron,” she says, and shoves past him to open the tiny closet near the door. She pulls out the steam iron and gives it a critical look before wrapping the cord more securely around the base, hefting it in her hand like she’s checking the weight.

He finds himself shrinking backwards to get out of her way as she walks into the center of the room. He doesn’t _think_ she plans to hit him with it, because that would be a pretty extreme response to getting a little choked up on nationwide television, but this is confusing enough that he’s playing it safe. She doesn’t need him in healthy competition form anymore, after all.

“Tess?” he says, very carefully. “What are you—"

— _doing_ , is the part that doesn’t make it out of his mouth, because Tessa abruptly sets her feet and hurls the iron straight into the far wall.

The impact is shockingly loud in the small room, a crunching bang as the metal point punches through the surface and sticks there, and she stands with her shoulders back and hands clenched at her sides, glowering like she’s challenging the iron to come back at her.

“Those _fuckers_ ,” she grits out. “God, the way they were looking at us.”

Scott realizes that his mouth is hanging open as he looks back and forth between his partner and the household appliance wedged six feet above the floor. “Holy shit,” he says faintly. “You put that thing halfway through the drywall.”

She wheels on him so fast that he jumps a little. He only remembers Tessa being anywhere close to this angry a handful of times before, and none of those involved destruction of property. “Did you see them?” she demands. “The whole studio, watching us like vultures. They looked so _smug_ when you were crying.”

He winces and feels his stomach roll over. “I’m sorry, T. I didn’t mean to—”

“Stop. I’m not mad at you,” Tessa snaps, and turns to pace restless circles in the space between her bed and Kaitlyn’s.

“You sure about that?” he asks dubiously. He wants to touch her, try to calm her down, but he doesn’t quite dare to move closer yet.

“I’m not mad at you!” she practically shouts, and Scott fights off the _right, yell a little louder and I’ll believe you_ crack that wants to come out, because this is not the time for sarcasm. They’re in the middle of a dormitory that doesn’t have the best soundproofing and she would never be this loud if she were thinking straight.

“Okay,” he says instead, even though he doesn’t believe her. He forces himself to sit down on the edge of her bed in an attempt to look relaxed, thinking of Jean-François’s rules: don’t contradict or debate, just de-escalate and listen. He’s probably going to screw it up because he doesn’t have much practice at this part—it’s almost always Tessa calming _him_ down—but he has to try. “Could you take me through what you’re mad at?”

Her jaw is working so tightly that it looks painful. “Everyone at the motherfucking CBC, that’s what.”

Scott tries very hard not to let his eyebrows go up, because that might look judgmental. She doesn’t usually swear this much, and especially not on the subject of national broadcasters. “Okay,” he says again. “I could tell you weren’t happy with the montage.”

He’d known it from the instant he reached out to squeeze her leg and she didn’t reach for him in return. He kept his hands to himself after that because her posture radiated _don’t touch me_ , even during the parts when she looked back at him and smiled and chuckled a few times, because her eyes had been brittle, flat, a gigantic neon sign that she was actually seething.

“Not happy?” Tessa chokes out a harsh laugh and shoves her hands through her hair, still pacing tight circles. “Scott, they showed us that damn montage because they hoped we would break composure. The assistant producer was scowling at me when I didn’t.”

 _I don’t think he was scowling, Tess,_ is the first response that comes to mind, but: don’t contradict. He swallows it down. And maybe she’s right. His eyes hadn’t been focusing very well after a minute or two.

“It wasn’t fair that they sprung it on us,” he offers, trying to keep his voice steady.

He feels a hot rush of embarrassment thinking about his reaction, how he couldn’t stop the tears from leaking out of his eyes, the way he’d had to use fingertips and the edges of his knuckles to sweep them away so he wouldn’t ruin his camera makeup. It hadn’t been his finest hour.

Tessa stops to yank off her parka and whip it into a corner, followed by her fleece. “No, it wasn’t fair. It was blatant emotional manipulation and they knew exactly what they were doing. They made us watch it first because they knew that I wouldn’t be unprofessional enough to haul you out of there before the interview. _Bastards._ ”

She’s not calming down. He can see every muscle in her shoulders knotting under her tank top as she resumes pacing the floor.

Scott knows he isn’t supposed to make this about him, he’s supposed to keep listening and de-escalating, but his stomach is so tight with guilt and shame that he’s talking before he can stop himself.

“Tess, I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to cry like that. I couldn’t help it. I just—”

Tessa spins on her heel and before he can blink she’s right up against him, standing between his knees with her hands gripping the sides of his face, eyes inches away from his own.

“I am not angry with you,” she says, spacing the words very deliberately. “That was not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m angry with _them_. They wanted to film our emotions and they trapped us in a position where we couldn’t defend ourselves. They didn’t have the right to make you cry on camera and they fucking did it anyway. _That_ is why I’m angry.”

Scott stares up at her, frozen. “Oh,” he says.

He can feel her hands shaking a little and her face is still taut with rage, eyes blazing. There’s nothing sweet or nice about her right now. This is the Tessa who listens to Eminem before competing, who faced multiple uncertain surgeries without flinching, and who prepares for interviews like they’re mortal combat and she plans to leave dead reporters twitching in her wake. In a split-second he understands just how infuriated she was, sitting there watching that video and listening to him struggle with his composure beside her, giant black camera lenses zeroed in on their faces, all of their media training useless until it was over.

Fuck, he’s an idiot. He should’ve known. He never should have assumed that she was irritated with him for getting emotional.

“Do you hear me?” Tessa asks, her eyes searching his face like she’s trying to dissect him, and he manages to croak, “Yeah, I get it,” and she nods once and says, “ _Good_ ,” before closing the distance and crushing her mouth against his.

Scott wasn’t prepared but he reacts instantly anyway, automatic; he’ll never stop responding to Tessa until he’s dead.

She kisses him so hard that he rocks back and thumps his head against the wall and he doesn’t care one bit. He hasn’t been able to kiss her since Seoul, ages ago, a week, stupidly long. She’s climbing on top of him and straddling his hips and he feels dizzy with relief, still absorbing the fact that he isn’t in trouble, it wasn’t his fault, she doesn’t blame him. He can shut down the awful mental loop that catches him too easily, the one that says she’s finally decided the last year and a half were a mistake and she can do better.

His hands are locked around her ass and pulling her tight against him and she isn’t complaining, she’s grinding down and biting at his lips like she wants to leave a mark.

And he wants to let her, but they learned this lesson in Helsinki. He turns his head enough to break away and murmurs insistently, “Tess, we have media again in two hours,” because he can’t show up in public with his mouth bruised and kiss-swollen. They’d never hear the end of it and she would kick herself when she comes to her senses.

He thinks the reminder worked as she switches her attention to his neck, kissing and then opening her mouth lightly over his pulse point, so he’s not ready when she bears down fast and starts to suck. He jerks like he’s been shocked and yelps, “ _Tessa_ , goddammit,” and twists his hands into her hair to yank her away before she can do visible damage.

He pulls harder than he intended so there’s a quick flash of worry until he sees her eyes, dark with the pupils blown wide, and feels her body arching to get closer.

It isn’t a surprise. He’s been able to tell since they started sleeping together that she likes being manhandled, that it makes her breath stop when he lifts her and puts her where he wants her in bed, but they avoided talking about it for months. He’d understood that too. She was more than a little panicked that it could break their concentration and negatively affect them on the ice, where most of his job description involves those same actions to a different end, and she hadn’t started to relax until it became clear that the worst-case scenario wasn’t happening.

Tessa strains against his grip like she’s trying to go for his neck again and he moves quick, hooking one arm under her ass to lift and roll her down on the bed, his other hand still fisted in her hair. “Cut it out, T,” he growls, his voice rougher than usual with his cold. “You won’t be happy if I let you do that and the internet explodes at us.”

“Yes, fine, I know,” she mutters, still looking half furious, and then she’s pulling impatiently at his clothes, struggling to get his parka zipper down while she’s pinned under his body. “Scott, come _on_ , hurry up.”

He sheds his parka as fast as possible, partly because he doesn’t trust her not to try something stupid again, but mostly because he needs to be touching her again immediately.

He hadn’t thought this would happen. He thought they wouldn’t have the chance to be together again until they got home, where he could take his time and strip her down slowly and kiss every inch of her skin; he hadn’t anticipated frantically rutting in a dorm bed between media rounds when he doesn’t know if her roommate might reappear at any moment, but he doesn’t think he could stop even if Pyongyang launched the missiles. Kaitlyn will just need to forgive them if she walks in on this.

Tessa peels off his t-shirt and tries to pull him back down, and he has to snap, “ _Tess_ ,” again and block her hands to attack her clothes in return, stripping her out of her tank top and sweatpants and underwear in a fumbling rush. He can’t tell if the dorms are too warm or if he’s just sweating because it’s been too long and he wants her so fucking bad, the mental stress of the last couple hours cranking everything higher.

His favorite sound in the world has been endlessly reported, but this is the runner-up: the high little keen she always makes in the back of her throat when she first takes his fingers.

“Don’t stop me,” she moans, and he knows what she means before her mouth fastens in the curve of his shoulder.

He doesn’t stop her because she’s being careful and staying far away from the line of his team shirts or his gala costume, so screw it, he’ll only need to make sure Patrick doesn’t see him getting changed. And he doesn’t stop her because it’s Tessa laying possessive marks across his body like she’s trying to erase everything that upset both of them today. It feels so good that he wants to scream, her mouth drawing at his skin and her nails digging into his shoulders as she whimpers and bucks against his hand.

His chest is littered with a half-dozen red bruises by the time she comes, gasping, her eyes wide so he can see the rim of green that sometimes seems like his whole existence.

It’s fast after that. They wouldn’t have time for slow even if he could manage it, which he can’t; he only gets his sweatpants halfway down before he’s sliding into her, pressing deep, dragging her hips up to meet him as she shudders and clings, buries her face in his neck, her voice cracking as she says his name again and again.

He doesn’t want to let go of her, afterwards. He wants to stay here and keep kissing her, soft and lazy, pressed so close that he can feel her chest expand with every breath.

“We need to get moving,” Tessa says drowsily.

“Mmm,” he says.

They need to separate and get cleaned up and somehow look presentable for their next round of interviews, and share each other with the rest of the world for longer than he really wants to think about, but they don’t have to do that for at least another minute. He has time to kiss her again.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Tessa’s contained body language as they watched the CBC montage the day after their win. I cranked up the emotional intensity after hearing the BX93 interview where Scott described what it’s like when they fight.
> 
> In real life I suspect these two are hardened enough that media attention is just a task to get through and they don’t let it affect them to an extreme degree, but it’s interesting to imagine otherwise. Top athletes wind up in such a strange multitasking environment with things like public relations and business strategy that are completely different skillsets from their physical talents.
> 
> The sex: I apologize for nothing. This fandom is brilliant fun.


End file.
